318 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



pure bred sires are on the increase. That is generally true, but 

 not of the whole country, especially in this State we have not in- 

 creased very much in the total number of stallions licensed, but 

 we have increased very materially in the number of pure breds 

 in reference to the number of grades, and he finds that to be true 

 all the way through. 



The states are arranged here as they stand: Illinois first, Iowa 

 second, etc. The main thing I wanted to point out here is, what 

 I called your attention to in the first place, our dearth of pure 

 bred sires. This table shows the number of horses; that means 

 mares or gelding or anything else. Take the total census of the 

 horses in the state, then take the census of pure bred sires in the 

 state. Now Iowa is the lowest; in other words, it is the highest; 

 they have 276 horses per pure bred sire; that is, for every 276 

 horses in the state they have a pure bred stallion. We have a 

 pure bred stallion for every 880. I think, I am not sure, but I 

 think it is very much lower than Iowa which shows you that we 

 liave, as I said in the first place, a dearth of pure bred sires and 

 it behooves us to make the most of every one that we have. Now 

 we say that a pure bred representative possesses distinctive char- 

 acteristics not common to other members of the same species to 

 which he belongs. 



There is, however, one thing they possess in common; all 

 the representatives of the breed must first of all be draft horses, 

 Now the distinctive characteristics are over and above that, funda- 

 mental characteristics are, 3^ou will find that in all our breeds 

 there is this fundamental characteristic; we have four great beef 

 breeds, some are black, some red and white, some red and white and 

 roan, but they are first of all beef breed cattle; we have four 

 great dairy breeds; some are colored one way and some another, 

 but every one of them is a dairy cow before she is anything else; 

 and so it is in draft horses; they must first of all be draft horses. 

 This is not only a representative of a breed but he is a representative 

 of a draft horse, and I admit that a draft horse is not as much 

 in order in this part of the State as in the east; that is, I mean 

 by that we have to emphasize draft horses down there because the 

 breeders don't know so much about the draft type. I know that 

 Crawford and Mercer counties are the two great draft horse coun- 

 ties of this Commonwealth, so we don't have to explain a draft 

 horse to the natives of this corner of the State; but down in our 

 corner, they are brought up with a light legged horse in their 

 minds. Here is a draft horse of standard weight close to 2,500 

 pounds and there is not an overgrown thing about him. You see 

 he is low down and wide out; he is compact, he is deep, he has 

 got the muscleing, he has the bone and if you could see him move, 

 he has got the power in his way of going; he just looks as though 

 he'd pull the corner out from under a house. So that in our draft 

 borse standards, they must have the scale, they must have the 

 substance; while this horse has some fetter there, he has a wonder- 

 ful quantity of bone in addition to the fetter. You can see it is 

 not beef that gives him his 2,400 lbs. weight, but the way he is 

 made. 



